Freitag, 15. März 2013

If I baked a cake for every significant birthday of an international
environmental agreement, I would have a weight problem right now. There has
been an avalanche of birthdays recently: the Montreal Protocol
to protect the Ozone layer turned 25; the Constitution of
the Oceans - called UNCLOS - turned 30 and now CITES - the convention regulating the international trade of wild plants
and animals - is celebrating its 40th anniversary (eek, same age as me!). Today,
a cake would be justified though, as CITES concluded its latest meeting in
Bangkok, Thailand, on a positive note. They took some additional steps to curb illegal
logging
and finally restricted trade
in key shark species. CITES is not in midlife crisis, it seems, but is fledging its teeth
and showing the world it has some bite! Good on them. You may keep hearing
about global environmental politics being dead. Days like today show that
reports of the death of multilateralism are highly exaggerated.

CITES currently has 177 member governments and usually makes
headlines because it deals with the trade of impressive looking elephants,
rhinos and tigers (you may have heard about Thailand
committing to end ivory trade at this year´s meeting. Leonardo di Caprio was pretty
excited about that). But CITES deals with A LOT more than elephants: It has
some 5000 animal species and 29 000 plant species on its overfull plate. It just
about manages to deal with that workload because unlike many UN agreements it
does not operate by consensus. If no common agreement can be found, parties put
a decision to a vote. The shark decisions this year were saved by a thin
majority – but saved they were. Even more importantly, CITES cannot just ask
nicely that governments please do what they have committed to. It can punish
governments that export more than CITES allows with trade sanctions that hurt.

In recent years, CITES had sadly not used these powers as much as
the world needs and failed to make progress on key issues such as
shark protection. Like other global
agreements, it had been hijacked by short term economic interests – with
governments acting as servants to big business. As a result several commercially
valuable but threatened fish species - including sharks - had failed to be
listed by previous CITES meetings in
recent years. That is why the listing of five shark species and two manta rays
(look here if you - like me
- didn´t immediately know what those are) today is all the more sweet. This
time, the forces of darkness lost – and CITES did what it was established for.
It protected our global commons over private interests.

Cake is in order then. And a big shout out to our allies Pew and the cites4sharks.org coalition that
worked tirelessly over these past years, months and days to ensure that these
species escape the fate of the poor dodo …Gratitude, also, to those governments
who stood up for sharks and the environment today. You know what, you should
have days like this more often – serving the people, not the polluters.

But this is not a champagne moment. Whilst it is a great affirmation
of multilateralism for the world’s governments to come together and decide to
protect these extremely valuable marine species, the need to do so is truly alarming
and sad. We need these CITES trade measures precisely because we are so
spectacularly bad at managing our planetary home, driving more and more species
to (the brink of) extinction. We need CITES strong teeth to protect sharks because otherwise we will not have any
sharks left. And to be certain that sharks have a future, much more than
today´s CITES decisions will be needed.

Millions of sharks are caught as part of global tuna
fisheries every year. Their bodies are thrown overboard, but only after the fins are hacked
off in order to end up in shark-fin soup. As a result, it is almost too late
for some shark species, such as the oceanic white tips, that have gone through
dramatic stock declines.

CITES trade controls will help monitor and limit the number of
species traded, as permits are only granted if the trade of the species can be
proven not to compromise the future survival of this species in the wild. These
extra measures will significantly improve current scientific assessments on
these species, which are currently weak or in some cases non-existent. However,
as long as fisheries management and enforcement in tuna fisheries remain weak, massive
loopholes will remain.

Following the positive steps taken at CITES today, it is now time for
governments to improve ocean
governance overall and to urgently ban shark finning. So called transshipments at sea
for tuna vessels – which in practice catch the majority of sharks – also need
to be banned. These transfers of
products from one ship to another enables shark fins to be “laundered” as
domestic trade, therefore escaping the scrutiny of CITES’ controls. Greenpeace,
therefore, is campaigning for tuna brands, restaurants and retailers to not buy
from vessels that engage in this practice.

CITES took a step forward today. That gives me – and all of us Rainbow
Warriors - new energy for the next battles that we must also win if sharks, our
oceans and our planet are to have a sustainable future.

Montag, 4. März 2013

The Rio+20
summit was nothing short of an
epic failure. In the face of accelerating climate change and an ever-increasing
use of resources, governments failed to deliver the transformational change needed to safeguard our planet’s future. There was
no commitment made to an energy revolution based
on renewables and energy efficiency, or to urgently end deforestation. Overall, the world got just words and greenwash,
not the urgent action required to provide prosperity for all without exceeding
our planet’s limits.

By
contrast, the strengthening of UNEP has been held up as one of the summit's top achievements.
It is indeed good news that the General Assembly finally agreed in December
2012 that UNEP will receive “secure, stable and increased financial resources from the
regular budget of the UN“. It was about time to end a state of affairs where
UNEP needed to pass around a ´begging bowl´ each year to secure vital funds for
environmental protection. And it was also excellent news that both Brazil and
China used the occasion of Rio+20 to
pledge significant additional sums to strengthen UNEP. This was a recognition
of the important role UNEP plays in emerging economies – and a long way from
the old, and false, “environment vs. development“ dichotomy that overshadowed
its founding 40 years ago.

UNEP rightly aims
to deliver “the environment for development”, and has worked very hard since
its creation to address and become relevant to the needs of developing countries.
Strengthening it therefore contributes to global development efforts, rather
than distracting from them: the environment is, after all, the essential base
for all development. No doubt, this is one reason why African Heads of States
and Governments want to see it turned into a fully fledged specialized agency.

Rio+20
should indeed have been the place where UNEP finally became a proper UN
Environment Agency, as many, including the African and European Unions,
demanded in the final plenary discussion session. Sustainable development governance needs a global authority for the
environment, with greatly enhanced implementation, compliance and enforcement
mechanisms. Yet governments failed to upgrade UNEP at the summit, another
reason for saying its outcome was a failure. UNEP did at least progress on the
pitiful status quo, but this progression was ruefully inadequate for a Heads of
States summit.

Governments must
now move urgently to complete the upgrading process started in Rio. They must
put flesh on the bones of the General Assembly resolution and secure
significant additional funds for UNEP´s urgent and important work. They must
also not shy away from more controversial subjects, such as giving UNEP the
tools needed to effectively monitor implementation of multilateral
environmental agreements – and to impose sanctions on those breaking the rules.
As long as UNEP can only plead, coach and capacity build, while the World Trade
Organization can impose punitive tariff measures on those
breaking their rules, there is an
unacceptable inequality of power. Environmental governance, people and the
environment will continue to lose out as a result.

Yet if
sustainability is to thrive, we will need much more than a strengthening and
upgrading of existing institutions. As well as UN Environment Agency with real
powers, we need global rules that change power dynamics and investment
incentives. Global rules on corporate accountability and liability, for
example, are essential to ensure that damaging people and the environment is no
longer a free for all, but has real costs. At the Johannesburg Earth Summit in
2002, governments acknowledged the need for global rules
for global corporations. At Rio+20, however, they
only called for slight – and voluntary – improvements in the way that
corporations report their social and environmental impacts. A binding global instrument that ensures full
liability for any social or environmental damage
global corporations cause must therefore remain high on any governance reform
list. Indeed, it will be fundamental test of whether governments want to set
rules for people and the planet or abandon responsibility to a free market
focussed on short-term gain.

In truth,
sustainable development cannot become reality in a world in which short-term
bets by financial markets are all-powerful. Strong controls of such markets are
therefore an integral part of the needed reform of global governance. New
fiscal instruments, such as a Financial Transaction Tax, need to be adopted to slow harmful speculation and deliver much needed finance for development and environmental
protection. A complete social and environmental review of the global trade
system is also long overdue.

There has been
talk about strengthening UNEP for decades. Remarkably, over the last 40 years,
UNEP has thrived in difficult circumstances. It's present ability to publish
global environmental assessments, for example, is remarkable: even twenty years
ago NGOs needed to invest a lot of resources to find and publicize the kind of
information that UNEP´s Global Environment Outlook , for example, now summarizes so succinctly. We are grateful to UNEP for
playing this role, thus allowing us to focus even more on frontline
campaigning. But, we also know that time is running out – and that every new Outlook report only underscores the
increasing urgency for action.

We must thus
strive for a true transformation of global governance that puts people and
planet at the centre of all decision
making. As a vital first step, governments need to give real power to UNEP and
upgrade it to specialized agency status as soon as possible. Our children can
simply not afford any more time to be lost.

Introducing myself, Daniel Mittler

I am the Political Director of Greenpeace International, heading their Political and Business Unit. I am leading a global team of specialists working on issues ranging from protecting the High Seas to disrupting dirty business models and toxic trade deals. We are responsible for internal strategy advice to campaigns and external representation at global political and business fora. I am a member of the Global Program management team and from September 2014 to June 2015 also managed the Actions and Science Units (two of my favourite parts of Greenpeace). I have also served on the senior management team of Greenpeace’s global forest campaign and on the European Executive Committee.

From 1997-2000 I was a researcher at the Bartlett School of Planning at University College London. I was looking at achieving sustainabilty in cities; mainly because I love cities. The year before, I was living in Bonn serving my country by writing press releases for the youth-wing of Friends of the Earth Germany (BUNDjugend).

Berlin, where I have lived - with a couple of breaks (in Oxford and Amsterdam) - since 2000, is now the (other) place I call home. To be precise: Kreuzberg.

I love kayaking, reading, going to the theatre and cinema, hiking, music (I still try to play the cello) - all the usual middle class stuff. I have a way too loud laugh, but at least I manage to laugh. What really excites me is making the world at the same time a more just and greener place - and creating spaces where people can get active. So, do something!